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Interesting piece from @danneidle.bsky.social on whether Britain has "run out of other people to tax". Much is right: the UK taxes ordinary and low-paid workers lightly by global standards, and you can't fund a big state from the very wealthy alone. But it overclaims where it matters.

Dan Neidle@danneidle.bsky.social

UK tax has gone up significantly over the last 25 years But the tax paid by the average UK worker has not This apparent miracle was achieved by taxing “other people”: higher earners, capital, property, banks, etc The strategy has run out of road A 🧵 on what happens next.

The core move is "almost no country funds a big state this way, so it can't be done". That shows difficulty, not impossibility – it's about the power of mobile capital, not a law of physics. And Switzerland, Norway and Spain run recurring wealth taxes today.

His claim that a wealth tax "wouldn't work" is presented as settled, but it's a live dispute and he's firmly on one side. And the sums he calls illusory aren't trivial: the popular taxes he dismisses could raise ~£40bn – more than the defence rise he cites in the same piece.

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The biggest gap in the piece is about income flows, but what drives public anger is the stock of accumulated wealth and soaring asset prices. He brackets it out as "inequality, not revenue" – but for many of us that's the whole point. Taxing wealth isn't only about the revenue.

The distinction between income and wealth inequality is exactly the weakness here. Asset inflation and accumulated wealth are central to public concern, so treating this as purely a revenue issue misses the broader point of wealth concentration and power.

Where I fully agree: land value tax. Replacing council tax, business rates and stamp duty with an LVT would be fairer and pro-growth. The Greens have campaigned for exactly this for as long as I can remember. Maybe we haven't run out of road – we've dodged the best tax on wealth there is.